A Finnish Punk Band with Learning Disabilities Is Going to Eurovision

​On Saturday Finnish TV viewers officially selected Pertii Kurikan Nimipäivät (PKN), a punk rock group composed of four middle-aged men with learning disabilities, as their entrant for the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest.

"We are rebelling against society in different ways but we are not political," PKN bassist Sami Helle recently told the Guardian. "We are changing attitudes somewhat, a lot of people are coming to our gigs and we have a lot of fans. We don't want people to vote for us to feel sorry for us, we are not that different from everybody else—just normal guys with a mental handicap."

"We are different to other people," Aalto recently told The Center for Welfare Reform of the feelings that inspire their work and the message he hopes PKN can communicate to audiences. "Some people are just different—but we have the same rights as everybody else."

"There's nothing more anti-establishment as [sic] four disabled and fiery individuals literally sticking it to the institutions which they've been surrounded by," wrote Nick Hard of Listin 2013, explaining his and many others' love for festival circuit darling The Punk Syndrome.

Observers believe the band's popularity has already started to change attitudes in Finland.

"We've started to see that people consider the mentally disabled more equal than before," Kärkkäinen told The Sydney Morning Heraldin 2013. "They have feelings, they want to have children, they want to drink alcohol and they want to have sex."

And the band seems to hope that their success will also inspire others with learning impairments to take a leap, put themselves forward, and start demanding their own rights and respect as well.

"Every person with a disability ought to be braver," Aalto told YLE recently. "He or she should themselves say what they want or do not want."

The Eurovision selection will prove a great platform for PKN to continue developing their fan base and raising awareness around and respect for people with mental disabilities.

"The most important thing for the band is music," Teuvo Merkkiniemi, PKN's new and current manager, told VICE, "but we understand that [our inclusion in Eurovision is a] huge statement for those European countries [where rights] of people with learning disabilities are poor."

Odds makers presently put PKN's chances for victory at 5-to-1, the third best bet behind Italy and Estonia (despite the fact that they're competing with perhaps the shortest song in Eurovision history). Even if they don't win, the visibility that will come with the competition is likely to greatly expand their following and allow them to push their message of respect and capability across a few more borders.